New in LuxRender 1.5.1 (Nov 22, 2015)
- We had almost forgotten to announce a quick fix release after v1.5.1 for a few annoying issues with glossy materials when using the new LuxCore rendering modes. So here you are, and in case you experimented some weird results this release should fix them.
New in LuxRender 1.5 (Sep 24, 2015)
- LuxCore:
- bumpmapping fix with instanced meshes
- biaspath incorrect path length handling fix
- huge memory leak fix
- optimize scene setup for speed and robustness
- nVidia suggested accelerations for OpenCL code (benefits all platforms)
- new opencl.kernel.options parameters to tweak OpenCL compilation options
- new .transform property for shapes and meshes
- Blender mesh import fix
- read the spotlight color from scene definition
- improve biaspath render statistics
- add radiance group export and saving support to all integrators
- improve mix material performance
- rough materials fix when using extreme roughness values
- Filtering fix causing overly blurry renders with path tracing and bidirectional path tracing
- normalmapping and bumpmapping fix when using complex texture trees
- LuxRender:
- nested instanced area lights fix
- some GUI tweaks
- support for blackbody texture with LuxCore renderer
- support for normalmap with LuxCore renderer
- LuxBlend:
- halt conditions rework and fix
- simplified scene settings, engine configurations, ...
- make the cloud texture available
- particle export fix
- viewport render crash fix
- AOV configuration fix
- instanced objects with armatures fix
- object naming fix
- material visibility fix
- new update button to get the latest LuxBlend version from the repository
- light samples fix
- use shape transforms instead of instances when possible for better performance
- transforms export fix
- band and other textures export fix
- improved render statistics
- proxy improvements
- material preview improvements
- anisotropic roughness fix
- improved volume export
New in LuxRender 1.5 RC 1 (Jun 22, 2015)
- OpenCL micro kernels for improved performance and reduced pressure on OpenCL compilers
- OpenCL tweaks suggested by nVidia to improve performance (general commonly accepted tweaks not specific to nVidia hardware)
- new biased path render engine with more tuning knobs to trade between render speed and render accuracy
- integration of Intel Embree technology for faster triangle intersection
- vertex color interpolation for area lights
- adaptive tile rendering with automatic stop condition
- auto-linear tonemapping support
- new irradiance pass with optional contour lines for lighting studies
- accelerated Blender mesh convertion
- add camera response support, metal2 fresnel parameter, blender procedurals in the built-in lxs parser
- improved OpenCL Sobol sampler
- new substract, blackbody, irregulardata, lampspectrum, fresnel (color, luxpop, sopra, preset), pointiness textures
- image storage improvement to reduce memory pressure with large textures
- new glossycoating material
- new orthogonal camera
- new volumetric cloud texture to simulate realistic clouds in the sky
- add various interpolation modes to the band texture
- new strand shape support
- fixes to mix material
- fixes to volumes
- fixes to glass materials
- fixes to lights handling
- fixes to motion blur in OpenCL
- remove hybrid CPU/GPU render engines
New in LuxRender 1.4 (Feb 18, 2015)
- LuxCore:
- new biased path tracing renderer to allow for fast and noise free, but less accurate, renderings, it is available in both CPU and OpenCL flavours with a special realtime mode (Dade can you make a list of current features, tuning knobs, and what's supported in LuxBlend? There is a thread about it, but not sure it is up to date: viewtopic.php?f=34&t=10529)
- Arbitrary Output Values support enabling output of Z buffer, position, material, normal, ... data (Dade, is there a full list? Is it fully supported in LuxBlend?)
- support for light groups
- direct visibility flag to hide objects in direct sight
- full C++ and Python bindings for the API (we should definitely write documentation for that)
- object, camera, materials, ... editing within the API to update the scene on the fly
- fixed mattetranslucent material
- the code is now Apache Public License v2
- new telnet interface
- port of blender procedural textures
- new lxs parser for backward compatibility with LuxRender
- support for quads in mesh definitions (they are split into triangles)
- support for LuxRender tonemappers (autolinear, linear
- point light support with IES support
- IES support to area light source
- support for spot light source
- support for projection light source
- support for constant infinite light source (without image map)
- support for distant light source
- support for velvet material
- support for sky2 light source
- improved VCM bidir implementation
- replaced FreeImage library with OpenImageIO
- support for cloth material
- support for carpaint material
- improved bump and normal mapping to match LuxRender output
- support for area light with null material
- support for volume absorption and scattering (single or multiple)
- support for clear, homogeneous and heterogeneous volumes
- support for volume precedence (to make it easier to work with liquids for example)
- support for arbitrary camera clipping planes
- support for volume emission (with light group support)
- support for gaussian pixel filter
- support for laser light
- support for Blackman-Harris pixel filter
- support for camera response
- support for rough matte material (Oren-Nayar model)
- support for camera autofocus
- support for rough matte translucent material
- support for motion blur (camera, lights, objects, but no deformation yet)
- pixel filters can now have arbitrary sizes
- fix bump map rendering with missing UV information
- area light fixes regarding the use of power and efficiency
- fix lxs parsing issues
- add support for imagemap channel selection
- improved reinhard tonemapper
- fix some light group issues
- fix a bug in shadow masks output and provide accelerated functions for AOV output
- fix light source update issues
- fix glossy2 issues when using absorption and multibounce
- fix metal2 behaviour when using custom colour
- add full update support to RT(BIAS)PATHOCL
- fix editing of lights
- fix editing of materials
- fix editing of textures
- mix material can now emit light
- fix exporting of glass properties
- fix metal2 material
- clamp is now disabled by default in biaspath
- support for glossytranslucent
- the lxs parser now supports more materials
- LuxRender:
- update of LuxCore renderer (biaspath support, new light types, new materials, new textures, volumes, new pixel filters, bias path halt condition, light strategies, motion blur)
- fix hair mesh normals
- new interface to render on MS Azure
- FreeImage replaced by OpenImageIO
- antialiasing of the render view
- add autofocus support when using LuxCore
- add imagemap channel selection support when using LuxCore
- improved reinhard tonemapper
- fix an issue with chromatic aberration post processing
- fix an issue with imagemap handling with LuxCore
- fix some bugs in LuxCore renderer handling of lights
- export glossytranslucent to LuxCore renderer
- change chromatic aberration lens effect slider range to something more reasonable
- LuxBlend:
- improved hair and particles export
- various fixes to the nodes system
- update LuxCore rendering modes
- default pixel filter is now Blackman-Harris
- render to viewport when using LuxCore
- direct volume data access for Blender >2.71 (faster)
- support for LuxCore specific material settings
- support for LuxCore materials, emission, bump and normal maps
- add the ability to configure min/max epsilon in engine settings
- fix texture preview with upcoming versions of Blender
- fix multithreading issues
- add shinymetal material to nodes editor
- increase limits of UV scale and offset settings
- improved resolution rounding (closer to Blender behaviour)
- add support for LuxCore AOV (arbitrary output values)
- add support for various Blender image types (file, generated, sequence)
- improved texture multiply
- fix LuxCore normalmap export
- fix issues with some texture trees using LuxCore
- add support for more textures when using LuxCore (dots, checkerboard, fbm, band, wrinkled, windy, add, uv, constant)
- fix particles export
- PEP8 conformance
- improved Blender statistics when using LuxCore
- much improved but still experimental realtime preview
- support of sun, sky and distant lights with LuxCore
- fix DOF support with LuxCore
- light groups support with LuxCore
- fix border rendering with LuxCore
- support for spot lights
- it is now possible to abort an export process
- AOVs support improvements
- fix hemi light orientation
- fix point light orientation (for IES which is now supported with LuxCore)
- support for projector lights with LuxCore
- tonemapping settings for LuxCore
- fix gamma of final render
- allow tuning of LuxCore rendering modes
- glass2 material support with LuxCore
- volume support with LuxCore
- volume precedence support with LuxCore
- lots of small bug fixes and improvements
New in LuxRender 1.4 RC 2 (Nov 17, 2014)
- LuxCore new features:
- fix bump map rendering with missing UV information
- area light fixes regarding the use of power and efficiency
- fix lxs parsing issues
- add support for imagemap channel selection
- improved reinhard tonemapper
- fix some light group issues
- fix a bug in shadow masks output and provide accelerated functions for AOV output
- fix light source update issues
- fix glossy2 issues when using absorption and multibounce
- fix metal2 behaviour when using custom colour
- add full update support to RT(BIAS)PATHOCL
- LuxRender new features:
- add autofocus support when using LuxCore
- add imagemap channel selection support when using LuxCore
- improved reinhard tonemapper
- fix an issue with chromatic aberration post processing
- fix an issue with imagemap handling with LuxCore
- LuxBlend new features:
- add the ability to configure min/max epsilon in engine settings
- fix texture preview with upcoming versions of Blender
- fix multithreading issues
- add shinymetal material to nodes editor
- increase limits of UV scale and offset settings
- improved resolution rounding (closer to Blender behaviour)
- add support for LuxCore AOV (arbitrary output values)
- add support for various Blender image types (file, generated, sequence)
- improved texture multiply
- fix LuxCore normalmap export
- fix issues with some texture trees using LuxCore
- add support for more textures when using LuxCore (dots, checkerboard, fbm, band, wrinkled, windy, add, uv, constant)
New in LuxRender 1.3.1 (Apr 29, 2014)
- fixes for latest OSX versions UI updates
- fix bloom filter used in an animation (the configuration of filters in the scene files was a new feature of v1.3)
- fix an issue with camera response
- improvement to the OpenCL version of the QBVH accelerator
- fix carpaint material node in LuxBlend
- fix export of glare maps parameters
New in LuxRender 1.3 (Apr 29, 2014)
- Improved support for Strands (hair).
- Support for vertex colors and alpha.
- Improved lower bound on glossy roughness (0.000001 vs old limit of 0.006), can be made mirror-like now.
- Better out-of-gamut color clamping.
- New "darken" color clamping mode.
- New "abbe" fresnel texture for specifying IOR using Abbe numbers.
- New false color tonemapper.
- New obstacle-map based glare, much faster and much better looking.
- New "heterogeneous" volume type (for smoke etc), along with 3d textures "cloud", "exponential" and "densitygrid".
- New "autopowerimp" light strategy.
- New Catmull-Rom and Blackman-Harris pixel filters.
- New renderer "slgrenderer", which integrates the SLG rendering engine in LuxRender (not interactive though).
- LuxRender now also has "sobol" sampler, faster alternative to the "lowdiscrepancy" sampler.
- Arealights can now be instanced, this allows for motion blurred lights.
- Support for deferred loading of meshes.
- LuxRender executable location has moved to addon preference panel, see Blender Addon page in user preferences.
- Support for node editor!!! Note this is still under development, which may later render your node materials invalid, so use for testing/playing only at this time please.
- support for bump and normal maps when using the mix material and the SLG renderer
- fix for the MQBVH accelerator in SLG when all primitives have the same bounding box
- improved preview in Blender (faster and more accurate)
- fix normal generation for loop subdivided meshes and make loopsubdivision more robust (it should no longer hang nor crash)
- make the IES parser accept more valid IES files
- properly compute sky power so that it can be used with importance light sampling strategies
New in LuxRender 1.2.1 (Mar 19, 2013)
- incorrect rendering of architectural glass with bidirectional path tracing
- broken motion blur export with Blender 2.66
- imaging pipeline inconsistencies with Blender 2.66
New in LuxRender 1.2 (Feb 26, 2013)
- fix a memory leak in the GUI
- fix display of .flm statistics
- fix rendering artefacts when the scene is very small
- fix for incorrect rendering of environment lights with large black areas
- fix for severe regression introduced in bidirectional rendering when optimizing dispersion code
- fix a long standing bug in bidirectional which made renders with bidirectional appear darker than with path
- fix lots of issues with hybrid path rendering, it should now match normal path rendering
- fix wavelength mutation in metropolis
- fix for image filters having a width less than 0.5
- removed the annoying message box when loading a queue file
- fix display of negative numbers in statistics
- lots of fixes for SLG3
- hybrid rendering modes are now available even on non OpenCL builds
- SLG bidirectional implementation with vertex merging or hybrid mode
- fixes to SLG sun light
- fixes to bounding boxes causing instances objects to sometime disappear or be clipped
- tile rendering with SLG
- more advanced GPU memory management with SLG
- SLG core is now a library
- port of some more Lux features to SLG core
- user driven sampling and noise aware sampling (still experimental with bidir and metropolis combination)
- all scenes rendered are now added to the queue so you don't have to choose between single render and batch rendering
- improved queue handling
- fix dispersion using SPPM rendering
- new woven cloth material
- WARNING: backward compatibility break: the displacement direction when using loop subdivision has been reversed to match general expectations and to be consistent with microdisplacement or bump mapping
- improved dispersion handling with path and bidir
- much faster bloom filter
- fix a memory leak that could be dramatic when using hybrid rendering
- fix for projector light not applying transforms correctly
New in LuxRender 1.1 (Oct 9, 2012)
- huge speed up with CPU rendering (measured from 10 to 40% improvement, mostly noticeable when using instances)
- new sky2 light using Hosek and Wilkie just released model
- render queue fixes when using network rendering
- fix haltspp when using SPPM
- new nsamples parameter to the distant light to match other lights and be adjustable with advanced light sampling schemes
- don't add an extra extension when saving jpeg or tiff files
- fix light groups LDR saving
- use a new cache directory in the user temp directory for network rendering to prevent denied accesses when downloading files
- prevent out of bound interpolation with the mix material
- network rendering fixes
- fix area lights consisting of several 100000 faces
- updated luxrays to support more LuxRender features in core
- architectural glass fix in SLG
- render noise threshold halt condition in SLG
- various fixes and improvements
New in LuxRender 1.0 RC3 (Aug 1, 2012)
- GUI supports loading "queue files" (.lxq) directly, they're simple text files with one lxs filename per line which are added to the rendering queue.
- Fixed issue with slow network transfers, as well as several other network fixes.
- Added alpha channel support in GUI, toggle it in the View menu.
- The theads, haltspp and halttime spinboxes in the GUI no longer updates the value during typing, only when enter is pressed.
- Tweaks to rendering statistics.
- Added "add" and "subtract" textures, these perform simple addition and subtraction respectively.
- Progress bar in GUI now shows the rendering progress if a halt condition is set.
- Added an initial "cooldown" to metropolis sampler, this avoids bias when using large mutation probabilities different than 0.5. This is turned on by default.
- Added experimental "adaptive" large mutation probability feature to metropolis sampler, which can be used to find the "optimal" large mutation probability for a scene.
- Various fixes and improvements
New in LuxRender 0.8 (Jan 18, 2012)
- Exporter fixes and packaging
- New GUI options to save render on demand (most file types are supported), with or without separate light groups, statistics overlay, ...
- new glossytranslucent material, initially developed for better leaves rendering
- film response curves to emulate traditional cameras color response (some curve are for black&white films too)
- GPU acceleration for path tracing when sampling one light at a time
- render queue to process several files in batch mode from the GUI
- support for split vertices in mesh subdivision (mesh will no longer open up in the presence of UV/normal seams when subdivided)
- new light groups color handling for better accuracy when adjusting light color
- outlier rejections (this will eat slightly more memory and slow the render a bit, but the noise level will be reduced significantly)
- finally usable exphotonmap integrator
- new band texture to enable complex gradients
- new volume scattering feature atop the volumetric absorption introduced in v0.7 (only homogeneous volumes for now)
- much improved ply mesh loader (supports quads, texture coordinates, subdivision, ...) and export to ply for various exporters instead of lux native (faster export and loading)
- on the fly microdisplacement to allow very high subdivision depths without any memory impact
- various fixes/improvements to the pylux library (should help Blender 2.5 integration, now using python 3.2 to follow Blender change)
- proper volume integrator support warning: behaviour change, the "single" volume integrator will only do single scattering (good for aerial effects), there's a new "multi" volume integrator for multiple scattering (good for SSS)
- improved mesh subdivision, the new "bool dmnormalsplit" option allows to create edges at shading normal splits so that hard edges are preserved by the subdivision
- new "multimix" texture to create arbitrary mixtures of textures
- removal of the "highcontrast" tonemapper
- photon shooting can now be aborted by stopping the render
- film output file path can now be overriden in luxconsole with the -o/--output option
- EXR output is now always linear (no gamma correction) even when tonemapped and post processed
- bidirectional integrator fixes
- volumetrics fixes
- render queue fixes
- nextwork rendering fixes
- the alpha channel is now exported if requested when saving from the GUI
- "environment" camera is no longer horizontally flipped and points in the right direction
- camera response presets so you don't need to keep the files around for most camera film types
- fixes for IPv6 networking support
- fix an issue when using IES profiles on area lights
- better handling of filenames across platforms (\ vs / separator issue)
- ability to load STL meshes
- new advanced tab in the GUI exposing various informations on the render configuration
- ability to use local coordinates, UV coordinates or normal coordinates for Blender and PBRT textures
- fixed light intensity when using an imagemap or bilerp to texture an area light
- new stop button behaviour in the GUI, the render can now be restarted, a new menu option allows a full stop of the render engine
- ability to embed file data inside LuxRender files
- new option for EXR output to output straight colors even with alpha channel (the standard requires that the color is always multiplied by the alpha value)
- ability to load and save tonemapping and post effects parameters in a file
- improve luxconsole statistics output
- make flm file writing more robust
- new color clamping scheme selector in the GUI
- check LuxRender network protocol version when doing network rendering
- fix alpha output when saving from the GUI
- new "solo" (appears as a + or - in the light group title bar) light group selector to disable all light groups but the selected one
- support IES files with comma separators instead of spaces
- add a centering option to the STL mesh loader
- prevent black splotches when using carpaint with the photon mapper
- various fixes and improvements all around
New in LuxRender 0.7.1 (Jan 18, 2012)
- new icons set by patro
- use QBVH instead of Grid as last resort accelerator for the mesh shape
- fix default extension when saving a FLM file
- new luxconsole option to force writing the flm file to disk prior to transmitting it over the network
- lots of point light fixes, most notably with IES data (finally works as expected)
- spot light fix
- photon map improvements
- stop using OpenGL in the GUI (the --noopengl option to luxrender is no more)
- new velvet material
- new mattetranslucent option to enforce energy conservation
- new option to the glossy material to get a more velvety look
- fix volume grid crash
- fix loopsubdiv UV interpolation bug
New in LuxRender 0.7 (Jan 18, 2012)
- bug fixes (mostly to reduce fireflies)
- photon mapping tweaks (to make it more robust, no behaviour change)
- new Qt GUI
- new version of the QBVH accelerator
- new supersample option (default on) to the mitchell filter providing both sharp results and almost no ringing artifacts
- lots of improvements to the metropolis sampler
- improved bidirectional integrator
- more direct lighting sampling schemes available for the path integrator
- the previous glossy material has been renamed glossy_lossy and the new glossy material should give better results by having less energy loss
- environment lighting now has importance sampling options to improve convergence
- volumetric objects supporting absorption for glass through the new glass2 material and volume properties (more options should be available in upcoming versions)
- vastly enhanced brick texture
- new tabulated data texture to allow loading of spectral data from files (including PBRT2 spectrum files)
- upgraded image loading to use FreeImage which brings support for more file formats
- note that now passthrough materials like null or architectural glass count as a bounce in the integrator depth
- various speed enhancements
- lots of bug fixes
- improved instancing export in LuxBlend
- hair support from LuxBlend
New in LuxRender 0.7 RC3 (Aug 17, 2010)
- bug fixes (mostly to reduce fireflies)
- photon mapping tweaks (to make it more robust, no behaviour change)
New in LuxRender 0.6.1 (Aug 17, 2010)
- new Qt GUI
- new version of the QBVH accelerator
- new supersample option (default on) to the mitchell filter providing both sharp results and almost no ringing artifacts
- lots of improvements to the metropolis sampler
- improved bidirectional integrator
- more direct lighting sampling schemes available for the path integrator
- the previous glossy material has been renamed glossy_lossy and the new glossy material should give better results by having less energy loss
- environment lighting now has importance sampling options to improve convergence
- volumetric objects supporting absorption for glass through the new glass2 material and volume properties (more options should be available in upcoming versions)
- vastly enhanced brick texture
- new tabulated data texture to allow loading of spectral data from files (including PBRT2 spectrum files)
- upgraded image loading to use FreeImage which brings support for more file formats
- note that now passthrough materials like null or architectural glass count as a bounce in the integrator depth
- various speed enhancements
- lots of bug fixes
- improved instancing export in LuxBlend
- hair support from LuxBlend